When I logged into my online bill payment account today I saw a strange new warning:

(For those who can’t read the tiny print, it says, “The Online Bill Payment service should NOT be used to pay your local, state or federal taxes.”)

It doesn’t immediately make sense to me why this would be the case, since I’ve used this service to send to everything from major corporations to individuals.  They’ve got it set up so that it recognizes payees who can receive payment directly versus those who can’t.  If a payee can’t accept payment directly, the service will print and mail a check on your behalf.

The only thing I can think of is that perhaps some tax entities require additional documentation beyond an account reference number, in which case there might be a problem, since there’s no way for Chase to include anything beyond a memo on the check.  You’d expect people to know better, but I suppose that’s being naive.  In which case it would make sense to include the warning lest Chase get sued when someone’s tax payment goes off into never-never-land.

For once, an SMS text from a cellular provider proved useful:

A “Black Widow” suicide bomber planned a terrorist attack in central Moscow on New Year’s Eve but was killed when an unexpected text message set off her bomb too early, according to Russian security sources.

The unnamed woman, who is thought to be part of the same group that struck Moscow’s Domodedovo airport on Monday, intended to detonate a suicide belt near Red Square on New Year’s Eve in an attack that could have killed hundreds.

Security sources believe a message from her mobile phone operator wishing her a happy new year received just hours before the planned attack triggered her suicide belt, killing her at a safe house.

I can visualize the text: HNY. HV A BLST.  LOL

One thing I’m enjoying about using WordPress is the Akismet spam filter.  So far it’s protected me from over 90 spam posts (in just about one month) with a 100% success rate (i.e. no false positives).  Interestingly, all of the spam that it’s caught appears to be entered by humans (or at least a fairly reasonable facsimile thereof).  They all use some fairly stock phrases that attempt to flatter you as to your content but that are completely unrelated to the topic of the post.  It comes across as really stilted and silly.

Anyhow, the spam sweatshops were especially busy last night, since there were 14 new spam comments in the filter awaiting my attention (I last emptied it around 5:00pm yesterday).  This one, in particular, though, caught my eye.  Not only do they have the audacity to try to shove this crap into my comments, but it’s kind of insulting to boot!

Dont acquire this the wrong way, but youre entirely boring me right here. Do not get me wrong, I imagine what you need to say is valid…completely! But, youve received to provide me a thing to believe about that involves pictures. You realize what they say, -A picture is worth a thousand phrases.- You could potentially cut down on the terms if you just gave me a few photographs.

If I’m so boring, then maybe you need to find another site to spam.  In the meantime, your comment is being routed to File 13 for proper consideration.

All you slovenly North Texans need to get your crap together and make sure you polish everything to a bright, shiny finish before the Stupid Bowl comes to town next month.  Also, you need to be on your best behavior.

Or at least that’s the message I’m getting from the various cities involved in this massive boondoggle.  While the level of rhetoric is steadily being ratcheted up to 11 (you can’t watch Fox 4 anymore without a “live” reporter breathlessly intoning on the latest 18-wheeler to arrive or the current status of tent construction), I was somewhat content to just ignore it all (even the creepy Slant 45 initiative), at least until Troy Aikman dropped the final straw on my back at the end of tonight’s 6:30pm news.

I mean it’s bad enough that the City of Arlington has a webpage dedicated to ratting out your messy neighbors (lest we offend any of the delicate sensibilities of the hoity-toity Stupid Bowl visitors as they visit Arlington’s Grand-Theft-Stadium), but now we’ve got Troy Aikman on TV telling us we all need to act appropriately when visitors come to town.

Unfortunately, I was not able to find a copy of this sanctimonious bullshit online, or I’d link it here, but it pissed me right the hell off to be lectured on hospitality and how to act by a guy whose claim to fame is that he could play a game that is more known for the misbehavior of its players than anything else.

Aikman, you can shove your commercial and your Stupid Bowl XLV nonsense up your ass (perhaps the commercial will make nice viewing for you until you get your head out of there).

So… some psycho nutbag shoots a Congresswoman in Tucson and the shell casings haven’t even hit the ground by the time the usual liberal suspects come out of the woodwork to inform us that it was caused by all that nasty right-wing hate-laden eliminationist rhetoric and that we need to “tone it down.”  Way to wait for the facts, there, Sparky!

If you really want to improve the tone of politics, perhaps the first thing you can do is avoid dancing in the blood of the injured and killed to score a political point.

I wonder if I should bother even hoping for an apology from all who blamed the Tucson attack on ‘right wingers,’ ‘tea partiers,’ and Sarah Palin?

I won’t be holding my breath on that one.

I have come to suspect that the death of our republic will not be accompanied by a thunderous KABOOM but instead by a plaintive whine of it’s for the children (or perhaps its hoary cousin if it saves just one life).

In a move that could not be more tone deaf than if Stalin himself had made it, Greek support company Systemgraph has sued one of its customers after he had the chutzpa to complain about their service.  Systemgraph is an authorized Apple reseller and service provider in Greece.

From the linked article:

He claims Systemgraph refused because the iMac wasn’t bought there. Papadimitriadis insisted he had followed the procedures set out at Apple.com. And he says he took his case to the consumer ombudsman, although that is a lengthy process. Clearly, there wasn’t going to be accord here. But it was what transpired next that has captured Greece’s imagination.

Papadimitriadis posted his story on a forum, something that seems to have upset Systemgraph. For the company has sued him for 200,000 euros (about $267,000), claiming he damaged its reputation.

His post, as translated by Google, does not seem to offer harsh or emotive language. The most anyone who has reported on the case claims is that Papadimitriadis described Systemgraph as “dodgy.”

Of course this is all through the lens of automated Greek-to-English translation, so perhaps something has been lost.  But if the facts are even remotely the same as my understanding, this is a case where discretion is the better part of valor and where it’s best to just let things be.  Systemgraph’s attempt to silence this customer for his supposed ‘slander and insult’ has simply brought the case into the glare of a world-wide spotlight.  Nothing good can come of this for Systemgraph, even if they unilaterally drop the lawsuit now.

While I was at the ATM this evening I noticed someone pull up behind me just as I was finishing.  Rather than hold them up I pulled forward enough to let them access the machine while I put away my card, cash, and receipt.  But no sooner than I’d pulled forward and folded the receipt the asshole pulled up and started honking.  He hadn’t even tried to use the ATM.

So I went ahead and finished putting stuff away and started to put the truck into gear when this guy started honking again along with the addition of yelling something or other that I couldn’t make out.  It was bad enough that he’d honked at all, so his escalating bad manners tripped my passive-aggressive frack with assholes gene.  I put the truck into reverse and held it there for a few seconds, then put it into drive and waited a purposely languid five-count.  This sent Mr. Impatient Rage-Head off the deep end and he really started losing it so I went ahead and moved forward, but at the slowest possible speed that an Avalanche can attain (so slow as to be unreadable on the speedometer).

I think what really happened here is that Mr. Impatient Rage-Head was trying to drive through instead of going to the ATM and misinterpreted my moving forward as being done rather than as doing him the favor of allowing access to the machine.  I say this because he immediately went to one of the nearby parking spots and someone got out.  Frankly, though, if you’re going to get into the ATM lane, you should expect some sort of delay.

I get a real kick out of annoying assholes, especially inconsiderate ones.  I think I need a bumper-sticker to that effect.  Although that might take some of the fun out of it.  Anyhow, the more you push, the more I resist and dawdle and delay.  It’s a natural and ingrained reaction.  But assholes never learn, so I seem to have a never-ending source for amusement.

Please, people, stop naming your girls Aubrey. 

As noted in the above linked Wikipedia entry, it’s a traditionally male name that, unfortunately, is also used for girls in the United States. 

Of Teutonic origin, “Aubrey” means “Fair Ruler of the Little People”, or “King of the Elves” [1]. The name Alberich is a more common Germanic variant, with the syllable ‘Alb’ translating as “Elf” and ‘Ric’ representing “power”. In the twelfth century, a Christian saint and abbot named St. Aubrey founded the Cistercian Order, seeking to operate under the Rule of St. Benedict, continuing Benedict of Nursia’s tradition of solitary scholarship in a community of monasticism.

The name is traditionally male, but is also used as a feminine name in the United States. It was the 69th most popular name given to girls born in the United States in 2007. It was last ranked among the top 1,000 most common names for boys in the United States in 2002. It was the 479th most common name for all males in the United States in the 1990 census.[2] “Aubrey” can also be spelled “Aubre”,or “Aubrie”.

It’s not too late to stop, though.  If we stop the madness now, in a generation or two things will be less confusing for those who come after us.

It will also mean I don’t have to share a name with a complete and total moron.

I was in the store last night and did a double-take when I saw a pallet of “Old Yeller” brand dog food.  It seems to me naming a brand of dog food for a dog that gets rabies and has to be shot would lead to unfortunate associations in the minds of buyers.  At least it does so for me.  I must not be the norm, though, as some Google searching shows that the brand has been around since 2005.